L'Aquila 2.0

"Money spent so far? Who knows...!" The reply given by Fabrizio Barca, the minister in charge, paints a horrendous picture of the status quo in L'Aquila, exactly three years after the 2009 earthquake. Following the initial fanfare, they have lost count in the see-saw of responsibilities and emergencies. Only one number never changes: zero. Historic districts restored: zero. Apartment blocks restored: zero. Churches restored: zero. Worse still, L'Aquila had been removed from the Italian conscience even before the debris (zero!).

Everything is still there, unaltered. Skirts hanging in open wardrobes in gutted houses; books fallen from the shelves and perched in the void, and vests hung out to dry on miraculously still taut washing lines, fluttering over the mountains of debris and red tape. Dozens of injunctions, rulings, orders, clarifications, amendments and specifications piled on top of each other have formed a pile that is crazier and more abnormal than certain inordinate scaffoldings made of Innocenti pipes and joints, which sometimes look more the hare-brained work of an avant-garde artist than a safety structure.

Three years after the earthquake, this is Gian Antonio Stella and Sergio Rizzo's "snapshot" of the situation in L'Aquila for a recent article published in the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

In the era of Web 2.0, we have witnessed more and more collective actions born thanks to and fuelled by digital technology; this applies as much to the Arab Spring uprisings as to the world of communities, creative and non-. The principles of communication, sharing, self-organisation, mutual support and interaction are developing with increasing speed and effect: at a local level, where the objectives are more concrete and the motivations stronger; and globally, where the free exchange of knowledge and design is providing everyone with access to knowhow and technology.



These might just offer the solution to restoring the community of L'Aquila, which now appears to have been completely forgotten by the politicians and the creative and design world alike, totally "removed from the Italian conscience", as Stella and Rizzo say. Tired of a degrading and inefficient welfare approach, all the city asks is to be given a chance to develop and carry forward its own design for renewal and redemption.

With the approaching anniversary of the earthquake, Wired Italy has launched the Occupy L'Aquila campaign and the hashtag #occupylaquila on Twitter to attract projects and ideas on how the city's reconstruction could be turned into an opportunity to make L'Aquila a city of the future, a smart city. The campaign will converge on the old L'Aquila city centre for a first "occupation" on 15 April.

A proposal heading in an even more interesting direction, at least according to this writer, is one developed for his Design masters thesis by Francesco D'Onghia, a student of Milan Polytechnic, an institution that has, in recent years, conducted constant and major research on the city, work that, like many others, has passed unnoticed without receiving the media attention and support it deserves.

KiKu, re-imagine the post-disaster reconstruction in the Era of Participation will be presented at the Milan Polytechnic on 24 April 2012. It is a project for a service: an online platform that supports and stimulates the community's self-development by placing locals at the centre of the reconstruction process.

After a calamity, those living in an area know, more than all others, the true needs. What is often lacking is the means to manifest these needs, group them, highlight them and make the authorities responsible for the reconstruction aware of them.

The project was inspired by Francesco's personal experience in L'Aquila, where he met people, associations and collectives that, on different scales, from allotment to self-built village, as in the case of EVA — Eco Villagio Autocostruito [Autoconstructed Eco-Village], and with different skills, were carrying forward their reconstruction and renewal project.

His first experience was a small project to restore a tiny garden, executed in conjunction with all those encountered during his stay in L'Aquila, which then led to the project, actually conceived for any catastrophe, of his masters thesis.

Instead of imagining a city of the future, we should perhaps enable the inhabitants and communities of L'Aquila to construct the city they want for their future. The city 2.0 may not be the simple application of a perfect and sustainable model, a technological utopia, but rather the solution that, with all the means available, satisfies the desires and needs of those living in that city.